The Transformation from Paper 1 to Paper 3
Coming into a college English class was going to be a huge step for me. Throughout high school writing a paper was a one and done thing for me. I’d sit down in front of my computer, and whatever came to my head went straight to the paper; somehow always flowing fluently form one idea to the next. In my English classes we would ‘peer edit’ but it was completely different than how I see it now. I hadn’t ever heard of global or local revisions and whenever I had received a revision from one of my peers it was more of the ‘good job’ or ‘fix spelling errors’. I never sat down with previous drafts, my drafts with editing done form my peers, and my in progress final draft. Now, I know what editing is and I have realized how much it allows my paper to develop, and my ideas to grow. I have learned that critiques from others is what allows an even better paper to form, and that settling with your first draft isn’t an option.
Even looking back at my first draft of my first paper to my final draft of my third paper I have seen a drastic change. I was open to the ideas of others and this allowed me to open my eyes to mistakes I have never noticed before. In the first draft I had a lot to revise and I got stuck on the fact that, in my head, it still sounded great. I received a lot of local revisions; ones that were sentence based, or more focused on word choice or if things flowed together smoothly. Paper two came along and I began to receive ideas on how to incorporate quotes that could enhance my writing. I started to see the importance of introducing and exiting quotes and even more, just how much quotes add to my writing. I noticed that taking my overall idea of my body paragraphs and tying it back to my main thesis keeps the paper in line. By the time I got to my third paper I was craving these in-depth revisions because I knew hiding from change wasn’t going to help me one bit. I began to notice it wasn’t all about local revisions. My eyes were opened to the idea of both local and global revisions, and I as I focused on both I watched my paper mold and transform to something I’ve never seen before. I began to focus on not only sentence structure and flow, but also the bigger picture; focusing on the idea I’m trying to get across, or the organization and purpose of my paper. Figuring out my thesis and incorporating it throughout my paper was a huge help because it allowed me to stay on topic and weave my quotes and ideas in and out of that one bigger idea.
Overall paper one defiantly had much more work that had to be made but I was shying away from the fact that making adjustments are okay. I realized how important it is to focus on the main idea of your paper and then finding ways to intertwine different ideas throughout. I learned a lot about fixing my compound sentences to allow my paper to flow better and finding better word choices to enhance my writing just a tad bit more. Paper two I worked a lot with my quotes and noticed their importance. Still working on sentences structure and word choice, I was able to find better ways to introduce and exit my quotes without just saying “he/she said”. Paper three came around and I took it all into consideration. Sentence structure, word and quote choice, introducing and exiting different ideas, finding ways to connect my paper and ideas back to my thesis without restating it directly, and most importantly, focusing on the main idea and the bigger picture of my essay as a whole. With all of this in mind, I have really seen my papers transform from my first draft of just a few ideas to my final draft full of organization and meaning. My writing process has developed a vast amount and I now see the importance of taking criticism to allow my paper to develop and transform.
